It is becoming more and more difficult not to understand that the US will not fade gracefully into the shadow and is readying for war as the end of the dollar hegemony gets closer.
As Ukraine is proving little more than a proxy war between the West and Russia, the UK and US are sending all they can to the front in Eastern Ukraine with little hope for now beyond delaying the inevitable. The risk and what Ukraine is trying to do is embroil Western countries in the conflict by sending more and more potent weapons until eventually Russia has no other option than retaliate directly on weapons being readied for war in Eastern Europe. Russia won't do it in the short term, but if these weapons are effective and create a stalemate in the East, how long can they standby, doing nothing? How many soldiers can they lose while the economy shrivel under the weight of economic sanctions? Nobody knows.
In between, the pain in Europe is becoming more acute. This was without doubt the strategy of Russia from the beginning: Giving a year, until Winter 2022, to the Europeans to think very hard how the can or rather cannot survive without Russian energy and resources and come to their senses. Will they? More specifically: Will they have the time before things escalate?
And escalate they will.
In Ukraine, it is likely that more "long range" weapons will be sent with the assurance from Ukraine that they won't be used against Russian territory. A promise from a drunkard that he won't touch a wine bottle would have more value! As the Russian army moves forward in Ukraine, the temptation will soon be irresistible.
In Asia, the US is pushing for closer and closer military links with Taiwan. China has stated clearly that this was a red line for them and that they would be ready to go to war "whatever the consequences" for them. Consequences which for now would be dreadful as China can easily be blockaded. The country would suffer immensely but then again, does the new version of Mao, Xi Jinping really cares? China has very little historic reasons to claim Taiwan but it does not matter what other countries think. It is the privilege of big countries to make their rules and ignore other people's concerns, as the US has shown again and again for over 70 years. Now, it's China's turn.
North Korea is strategically insignificant. They are little more than a gadfly representing a risk for... Seoul and Inchon, mostly. Although they have been used as a bogeyman by Japan and South Korea for the last 20 years to rearm against China. And by the US to keep troops in both countries also against China. This is all kabuki but nobody is a dupe as everyone understand perfectly where are the real military risks. They are not the vintage Mig 19 and 21 the North Koreans are still flying.
The Middle East is another powder keg. Iran may or may not be developing nuclear weapons. They probably are not since it would be suicide for them. But then again, the examples of North Korea and Libya show clearly that having the weapons is better in the long term as your enemies need to think twice before invading. So who knows? What is certain is that since no agreement is possible in the short or even medium term, with the pressure of sanctions adding to the exploding price of commodities, Iran will need to do "something" less the country explodes under the strain. We are talking months, not years.
Likewise, the reprieve of Covid in the West is almost over and the financial system is again on the brink. The Central Banks can't raise rates due to excessive outstanding debt while inflation is raging. This means that purchasing power is being eroded while the economy sputter. Central Bankers are talking about 1970s style stagflation while they know very well that their predicament is far worse. They have almost no weapons left to fight this bout of inflation while governments can't stop showering money on their respective populations less they lose legitimacy. The dream of "Global Reset" is little but that: A dream. Without access to natural resources, Europe in particular cannot do any "global" or local reset. The crash in living standard will be astounding and not survivable for the system.
So here we are, mid-2022 with many governments all over the world having painted themselves into a corner, looking for the solutions to an 8th degree polynomial equation. There are none! Which is exactly the kind of circumstances under which, historically, countries have gone to war.
The only difference nowadays is that in many respects a total war has become unthinkable. It would be short and brutal, most certainly involving nuclear weapons as well as a huge level of disorganization at the global and local level. While tens of millions of people would die instantly, hundreds of millions would follow within a rather short time.
Unthinkable? Let's hope so. Although maybe not as it looks more and more likely that the fear of a nuclear winter may have been wildly exaggerated. It was based on early calculations that 10 megaton bombs would throw a large amount of dust in the stratosphere where it would stay for months, maybe years. But what if the calculations are not only wrong but actually fanciful? The last time we had a "nuclear winter" was in 1992 following the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines, North of Manila. Yes, the temperature dropped a few degrees in the Northern hemisphere and we had a miserable rainy Winter in London. But a year later, everything was back to normal. The biggest eruption before that was the Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883. 10 times bigger than the Pinatubo. The effect on the climate was slightly worse with the extraordinary sunsets painted by Munch a year later. To get a real Nuclear Winter, you have to go back to 1816 and the eruption of the Tambora, also in Indonesia. This one was again 10 times larger than the Krakatoa and the following year was indeed called the year without a Summer with famines around the globe. But we are now talking about explosions a magnitude larger the largest nuclear bombs we have. And even in that case, the atmosphere was quickly back to normal.
Likewise, we are being told that the ground directly below a nuclear bomb would be inhabitable for centuries. Everybody who has been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki knows that this is false. Unlike a nuclear reactor which when it explodes, showers a large area with nucleotide, a bomb does not because most of the dangerous uranium or plutonium atoms are transformed instantly in much smaller atoms with a much shorter half-life, releasing a huge amount of energy. A month or so later, you can walk back to the area and start rebuilding as the Japanese did in 1945. The number of cancer will increase dramatically but for people just out of a war, these are secondary problems compared to the more immediate problem of finding food on a daily basis.
So the reality is that even in the case of a full blown nuclear war, many people will survive. In fact, so many that some governments such as in the US for example, not only believe that they can survive a nuclear war but can actually win one. Meaning that they will retain enough military power to actually destroy what is left of their enemies after a nuclear exchange. This view seems to be prevalent in Washington, which may be one reason behind the rise of tensions with Russia and China. When you stop being afraid then every scenario becomes possible.
Which is why, I agree with many pundits that we are probably closer to war than we have even been since the Cuba Crisis in 1962, and maybe worse.
So let's hope for the best, although preparing for the worst looks more and more like a good idea.
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